payroll deduction; special expense; special receipts

There must be a reason but I don't see growth for SSA (hard to predict I know) or Special Receipts even though I did add a growth factor to Receipts. It shows the columns for today's and growth numbers on the entry screen but the spreadsheets reports don't show these two incomes growing so I am not sure it is a fair compare to my retirement accounts which do show growth according to the assumption I entered. Should I take growth out all together? But then My annuity which is fixed is showing a decline over time which is to be expected with 3% inflation a year?

In this topic on stock options, distinction was made between wages and taxable special income, with respect to the FICA Medicare part A tax. That brought a question to mind. I didn't want to hijack the thread, so I opened this new one.

To get (what I think is) correct tax treatment of payroll deductions, I record my earnings as gross, enter the payroll deductions as excludable special expenses and, in the case of flexible spending account deductions, record those deductions again as non-taxable special income.

I'm 3 years from retirement and my wife and I needed to know if we were on track financially. ESPlanner has allowed us to enter our income, assets, and liabilities and has provided us with a level loaded projection of how much money we will have available to spend each year in today's dollars. There are lots of unknowns in anyone's future, but with this program, I feel like I can track where I am financially.

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